Hitch-22 was a title born of the silly word games we played, one of which was Titles That Don’t Quite Make It, among which were A Farewell to Weapons, For Whom the Bell Rings, To Kill a Hummingbird, The Catcher in the Wheat, Mr. Zhivago, and Toby-Dick…
Salman Rushdie remembers a fun word game he played with Christopher Hitchens.
Over breakfast, Les UDs have started coming up with some of their own:
To Have and Not Have
The Siblings Karamazov
Pride and Prejudgment
Darkness at Eleven-Thirty
The Way of All Skin
April 27th, 2012 at 9:29AM
I’m feeling Shakespearean this morning:
Romeo and Brandee
Much Ado About Zilch
Dick III
A Midsummer Night’s Zoning-Out
Love’s Labours Somewhere on My Desk
April 27th, 2012 at 9:48AM
Much Ado About Zilch is the winner.
April 27th, 2012 at 11:45AM
Ed-School Diaries?
April 27th, 2012 at 12:57PM
East of Ipswich
April 27th, 2012 at 3:46PM
I Married a Social Democrat
The Human Blotch
Portnoy’s Kvetch
Pink Noise (Also other color plays: i.e. “The Brownest Eye”)
Mao 3.0
Tangelos Are Not the Only Fruit
Man Who Almost Nobody Notices, But Isn’t Quite Invisible Because That’s Just Crazy
The Brief Wondrous Life of George Smith
Neverending Pun
In Search of Lost Time 🙂
April 27th, 2012 at 5:12PM
Joshua: Les Soltans are currently giggling. Winner, I think: I Married a Social Democrat. The best titles seem to me to follow the principle of profound dropping off, profound disappointment, in the final word, and that one’s a great example…
April 28th, 2012 at 6:44AM
Can I play, too?
Of Mice and Guys
The Angry Grapes
The Heart Hunts By Itself
The San Luis Rey Overpass
A Room with Windows
And, another take on Pasternak:
Zhivago, M.D.
April 28th, 2012 at 7:09AM
Why does Faulkner seem so particularly suitable to me here?
The Noise and the Fuss
As I Lay with a Hangnail
Biblical Allusion, Biblical Allusion!
April 28th, 2012 at 9:22AM
Shane: Biblical Allusion! – so fine.
April 28th, 2012 at 9:46AM
TAFKAU: I too played with Heart is a Lonely Hunter – the ripest titles seem to me the longish ones full of poignancy, just like that one… (So for instance a title I just came up with is Pale Horse, Pale Jockey.) But you came up with something much better than I was able to come up with.
April 28th, 2012 at 9:48AM
Alan: Fun! Didn’t know about that show.
April 28th, 2012 at 9:48AM
Jeremy: Yes indeed.
April 29th, 2012 at 3:16PM
My wife came up with For Whom the Bell Tinkles.
April 29th, 2012 at 4:48PM
adam: Excellent!
April 29th, 2012 at 10:00PM
Lady Chatterley’s Boyfriend
Sinners in the Hands of a Peeved God
The Red Badge of Curiosity
Tess of the Joneses
April 30th, 2012 at 1:08AM
Now I am in a John le Carré mode:
The Spy Who Came in From the Chill
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Snitch
The Little Drummer Co-Ed
The Stitcher of Panama
The Constant Horticulturalist
April 30th, 2012 at 3:21AM
John: Tess of the Joneses is pretty brilliant.
adam: My favorite is Constant Horticulturalist. And your list of five titles has me thinking we should make the game more challenging by trying to make limericks out of our titles…
April 30th, 2012 at 11:32AM
As for Ian Fleming:
On Her Majesty’s Secret Errand
Dr. Maybe
Goldtoe
Quantum of Cheer-up
Octomommy
April 30th, 2012 at 9:18PM
The Public Transportation Named Desire
April 30th, 2012 at 10:09PM
Sophie’s 6 to 5 Pick-em
May 1st, 2012 at 2:20AM
bobopp: This one took me a second to get. Very nice.
July 5th, 2013 at 8:21PM
This is great. You have to create a facebook group for this topic. I heard Geoffrey Robinson (QC for Julian Assange and ones of Australia’s eminent thinkers) mention this in a lecture:
http://youtu.be/OHJGhWeNSeA
July 5th, 2013 at 9:50PM
Andrew : I just watched and enjoyed the Robinson talk. Many thanks for the link.